Much of what happens in school is hard to rank, measure

Dave Sheehan

Sunday

Dec 18, 2011 at 12:01 AM

Contemporary commentary on the public schools is traditionally accompanied by a funeral dirge. A rare and refreshing front-page tribute to the success of Elmira High School and its Advance Placement history class (Register-Guard, Dec. 10) promptly devolves into a Byzantine exercise of ranking Oregon’s 281 high schools, as if the whole thing were an international figure skating competition. And what could be more dodgy than that?

Pundits various and sundry commonly portray the public school system as utterly failed and broken. Don’t tell that to the kids auditioning for the winter musical, running in the cross country nationals, organizing a canned food drive or blowing a horn in the middle school band. Before passing judgment, do pop in on the special education department and see what’s afoot in there.

We’ll carry on debating whether we want Nordstrom schools or Walmart schools for a good while yet. That’s a healthy and necessary tap dance. Meanwhile, thousands of kids pack their backpacks each morning — their books and pencils, lunch sacks and mixed feelings —and march off to school like good soldiers. It’s a large and continuous miracle. Like the sunrise, but not as easily explained.

While fording school corridors and cafeterias, the kids will mostly get along with each other. Hilarity outpaces hostility by a ratio of 10-to-1. Despite a gaping lack of adult supervision, stuff gets done. Kids stumble over themselves to hold the door for you, and smile good morning. Especially when met with same. Teachers and support staff will break up a lot more kissing matches than fistfights; administrators dispense more hugs and handshakes than disciplinary measures. This comes as no surprise to those of us who spend the better part of each day in the public schools.

Blaming someone or something for all that is wrong with the public schools is a national sport. All weakness is the fault of conservative Republicans who wish to privatize the whole operation. Only days later, we’re shocked to discover that, on the contrary, the fault lies with tax-and-spend Democrats. Teachers’ unions are a frequent target. And we can’t decide whether to pay teachers in peanut butter and dog food, or retire them to Mediterranean villas.

Into the bargain, our standardized test scores don’t measure up to the Finns’ or South Koreans’ (never mind the homogeneity of those countries, or their incredible lack of American-style poverty and social ills). Personally, and around my own teenagers, I blame Snoop Dogg and Sponge Bob.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’ve been at this since roughly the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and it’s still a work in progress. Every decade or so there’s talk of a paradigm shift of one kind or another. But in my experience — save some exterior trappings and fashion accessories — the kids look pretty much the same as they ever did, and many classrooms still don’t have windows. No tectonic paradigm shifts in that department.

True, most kids now carry the Library of Congress around in their hip pocket, and I have students completing online coursework anyplace they can scare up a Wi-Fi signal and enough loose change for a chai latté. Admittedly, that’s changed the rules some. The essence of good schooling, however, remains the same: teaching and learning the skills necessary for discovery and self-expression.

Public school education is an almost universal experience in this country. Chances are, your ability to read this newspaper is the result of that experience. But you knew that. At its nadir, an imperfect public school system continues to teach the vast majority of us to read, write and master arithmetic with some semblance of proficiency.

Outcomes depend upon variables that sometimes fall way outside the brick and mortar of the school system: Genetics and abject poverty leap to mind. Outcomes also are dependent upon student and family attitude. Too often, I think, we have a tendency to treat the schools like a doctor or dentist’s office. I have done it myself. One cannot be educated simply by visiting a brilliant professional, taking a comfortable chair, kicking back, and saying, “ahhhh.” While raising standards, let’s consider family and community involvement standards.

At its very best the public school house — to paraphrase the late Kurt Vonnegut — provides a place where kids figure out what they’re good at, what comes naturally to them, what they were put onto this Earth to do. Much of what happens in school is difficult to rank, measure or standardize. Thank goodness for that.

Schools are genuine forums for sharing and comparing divergent ideas and beliefs. They’re where we learn to decide for ourselves what is poop and what is Pine Sol. Given the maelstrom of baloney that our kids deal with each day, they’re getting plenty of practice. Schools provide a daily platform for shared government, norm setting and collective problem solving. A tremendous amount of public school learning has naught to do with the textbook or teacher. It happened in the public schools today, and — inshallah — it will happen tomorrow.

As a closing caveat, regardless of their intentions, policies like No Child Left Behind generally assume that all children are going to the same place, by the same route and at roughly the same pace. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Lumber, oil filters and light bulbs need to be standardized, or we’d be in an awful mess. Let’s exercise caution when deciding the lengths we go to standardize kids and knowledge. Let’s be especially cautious that rigor is not mistaken for rigid. Failing to recognize the strengths, gifts and interests of individual kids leads to lockstep yardsticks and dubious requirements. The institutionalized cramming of cottage cheese down a soda straw. One can graduate from high school having never acted in a play, torn down an automobile engine, built a sturdy doghouse or field dressed a deer while blindfolded. Let’s present kids with challenging curriculum, but let’s not present a one-size-fits-all education. Nor, put stones in their backpacks.

Dave Sheehan (sheehan@4j.lane.edu) has been a teacher for 25 years. He teaches special education in the mornings at Churchill High School and facilitates the 4J Street Academy in the afternoons.

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